Stenrik eller stenfattig : En studie om hur det var att arbeta, leva och bo på Tjurkö

Sammanfattning: In this study, we follow the life of ordinary people at the quarrying at Tjurkö in Karlskrona archipelago, Sweden. The life of the poor was hard and tiring to the bone. A normal workday for a stonecutter started around seven am. to around eight or nine pm. They got paid for how many approved stones they could present in a day. Around 1870, the general pay was 1–3 SEK a day, which today estimates around 60-180 SEK. The living arangements were small and crowded.  Many of the stonecutters and their families lived in barracks with six rooms in each barrack. In these rooms there could be either a whole family or up to eight unmarried men living togehter. The food was often the same every day as the families could only afford the bare necessities. The wives baked bread for the family each week. With the bread, they often had potatoes and salted herring.  The children started to work in the quarry early, often at the age of eleven or twelve years of age. A few of them even started working earlier than that. For many families there was a choice, either your child could work and bring in money, or the whole family would starve to death. The choice was often very easy to make.